When I say a footnote, I mean it so, if that is all you are interested in you had best skip to the bottom of the post!
I had planned to go to Lower Moor Farm this morning but, with a large team making themselves available, I decided to go back to Somerford Common West. With the astonishing catch that I had there two weeks ago I felt that it would provide a better experience for the team, even if they were being put at risk of yet more Blue Tit biting. We met at 7:30, just as it was beginning to get light, and set up the same nets as last time. From next Saturday it will be 7:00 starts! Such fun!
It was a good session. The weather was initially fine: dry, overcast and virtually no wind. However, at 11:00 the weather suddenly turned much colder, so we shut the nets to avoid cold-stressing the birds after so much poor weather recently.
The catch was regular throughout the morning and we did catch some interesting birds. Firstly, at 9:15, Adam extracted, and then ringed, his first ever Brambling:
Adult female Brambling, Fringilla montifringilla
Brambling are an uncommon catch in the Braydon Forest. There is plenty of beechwood, so why that should be the case I have no idea. Prior to our first catch of the species, four of them at Somerford Common and one in Ravensroost in February 2019, none in 2020, two each in 2021 and 2022, with a blank again in 2023, there had only ever been a single report, of one flying over Ravensroost Wood, for the Braydon Forest. This was our tenth Brambling ringed. At the same time, Daniel got to ring his first ever Chaffinch, a cracking adult male, and his first ever Treecreeper. Then, at 10:00, Laura extracted her first Great Spotted Woodpecker and Adam ringed his first. This is getting to be quite a remarkable catch of this species: ringing our sixth of the month, when we only ringed four in the entirety of 2023. These have been caught, one at a time, in six consecutive woodland sessions! We then also retrapped a female ringed at our last session here.
Then, at 10:45, we caught another Chaffinch, ring number APX3919. That is not one of our group rings. I shall be very interested to find out where it was ringed.
The list from today was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1(1); Treecreeper 1; Blue Tit 13(7); Great Tit 7(6); Coal Tit 4(8); Marsh Tit (2); Blackbird 1; Goldcrest 1; Brambling 1; Chaffinch 1(1). Totals: 30 birds ringed from 9 species and 25 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 55 birds processed from 10 species.
As mentioned, it turned cold at 11:00, so we closed the nets, extracting and processing the last half-dozen birds, and took down. With three sets of us taking down three net sets, it took very little time. Everybody else got away at midday – only my car decided that the battery was flat (it is less than three months old!). Fortunately, I invested in a wonderful little gizmo that gives your battery a boost and it worked beautifully, as did Justine revving the engine so it didn’t stall, so we were away by 12:15.
So, to those of you who have made it to the end: Jonny Cooper has found himself a number of rather excellent farmland sites in the area to the north and east of Chippenham, across to Calne, and today he landed himself a cracking catch at one of his sites near Hilmarton:
Corn Bunting, Emberiza calandra
They are seen regularly on the Marlborough and Winterbourne Downs and Salisbury Plain and, to date, those places are where the vast majority are caught and ringed. The first bird I ever ringed was a Corn Bunting caught at Ogbourne St Andrew. Recently some have been caught on the group’s Salisbury Plain sites, but this is the first time, as far as I can find out, that any have been caught and processed in this area.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 